Philips Charlie VCR (VR6870) - STUCK CASSETTE

[ben]

Remember this thread? Well, today I finally came across a stereo charlie. Tried a junk tape and it wound back and forth OK, played back, shuttled...but when I pressed stop, the thing jammed up at the point of unlace.

I'm sure those reading will recall that the load motor/belt on these is sort of sandwiched between the upper and lower decks. With the damn cassette in the way, I can't access it. Any tips before I go probing?

[ben]

Some progress. As there was no way to access the gears/belt, I disconnected the load motor and did the old trick of using a 9v battery. The thing could be shifted back and forth only a few millimeters but after a few tries something loosened up and it unlaced and ejected!

I have since powered that motor without a cassette in the mech and it still locks up just as unthreading begins. Sounds like something is binding - maybe aged or worn plastic? This video does look like it has been looked after. There are a couple of repair job no. stickers and the pinch roller is certainly not the original. The cabinet etc. looks like new.

Will keep investigating.

[bobbyball]

There is a strange sort of "concentric rotating clutch" assembly that is driven by an eccentric wheel (in true "eccentric" Philips style) driven by the loading motor: this assembly is what made these decks make the charactersitic "grinding" noise while loading. There is usually wear here which could be the cause of your issues. The service kits supplied a modified clutch that was much quieter and this whole lot also drives a "rack" which itself can be responsible for the whole lot jamming if any of the teeth are at all misaligned. The only way to see this lot of course is to remove the top plate; not a job for the faint hearted as the placing of the pinch roller will then be lost and said position is critical to the whole mechanism working correctly - misplacement will cause broken teeth. The tracks on which the cassette carrier run can also crack and/or loose teeth. I wish you the best of luck!

[Clydeuk]

One method I used to use to correctly locate the pinch roller was to manually move the mechanism into the fully laced position, insert the roller assembly into the top plate, again in the position it would be if fully laced, then mate the top plate with the rest of the mechanism. This method never failed me. If I remember correctly one of the more awkward parts of the job was refitting the loading belt.

[HamishBoxer]

I used to replace p/rollers on these without strip down by external volts to the load motor getting the mech in a certain spot and in/out it came.

[Maarten]

You had to push down (or unlock and push down in later revisions) the connecting wheel in order for the roller assembly to slide out.

[ben]

I've changed loads of pinch rollers in these, and mentioned it here in the past. There's a great trick involving two screwdrivers!
Not had this sticking problem yet though. Will try some more cycling to see where exactly it gets stuck.

[Welsh Anorak]

Hi
Obviously as I only have ONE screwdriver I used a combination of the 9v battery and Ben's technique - takes only a few moments. However, removing the top deck and replacing the kit takes a little longer. All right,a lot longer.
I suspect you have wear on the rack which needs the whole lot changing - and it will still sound like a tractor, albeit a quieter one. Then you find the tracking is out and the black runners are cracked. An alignment manual is almost essential with this - I have one if you're stuck.
Should have bought a JVC....
Glyn

[gec2110]

My first train set .
I use to struggle with these until I got the training tape.
it is very easy to change the pinch roller you have to put in half load mode , so that the straight edge of the plastic runner is in line with the straight edge of the deck .
use PP3 battery to get to half load mode then unscrew the top part of deck fit roller.
then put back together
The later Charlie decks were better had a guard so that the cassette could not be forced in .
They are much better than the VHS Grundig machines of the same period

[samjmann]

Hi,

I used to change these pressure rollers by the dozen. The 'half load' way is by far and away the easiest method of replacement. I used to make a small double loop of solder to pull the loading belt over the motor pulley.

If you were unlucky, after swapping the pressure roller, you would sometimes find the tracking was off, often with the tape riding to high up on the ACE head.
This was down to wear on the capstan bearing. If you then swopped the bearing as well, alignment was often unnecessary. If I remember even then the parts came to over £40.00 for all of this (repair kit and bearing).

Happy days...

SJM.

[Clydeuk]

I have to say that is an eye opener, I never knew about the capstan bearing wear. I have a Charlie machine which was the first VHS recorder I bought new. It got hammered recording wise but remained reliable until I retired it for a Hi-Fi machine.

Pulling it back out last year the roller had deteriorated badly, after replacement I have this issue with the tape riding up the A/C head, only slightly but worse on forward search. I assume this is the reason?

I gave the whole deck a good clean, one of the felt pads by the take up reel had come off and was sticky, I replaced this with a piece of felt cut from a back tension band.

Can these bearings be replaced? and any idea where to get them from nowadays?

[samjmann]

More 'Charlie deck musings..'

Where you'd get a bearing kit from now I don't know. I think I saw a service kit the other week, I'll see if I can find it & let you know.

From what I can remember, on the top part of the bearing housing the phosphor bronze top bearing used to come loose in the plastic housing. As far as I can recall the bearing itself didn't wear. In those days we used to simply swop the whole bearing, it might be possible to effect some sort of repair.

You can, with care adjust the tilt of the ACE head slightly to tilt the top of the head towards the tape - with the back torx10 screw on the head. This will counter the tape creep to some extent. You'll probably need to give the azimuth a slight tweak as well afterwards. A word of warning, if as one of our chaps did, you take the tilt screw about 4 turns down, it actually touches the tacho on the flywheel underneath. The whole unit then shuts down in 'protect'. I was hours on this one till I realised what had happened.

Why this 'tape creep' problem started with a pinch roller change I'm not entirely sure. These units would work for years with a badly worn roller and we never seemed to get a poor sound/tracking complaint. Typical Philips design of course... 'Simply years ahead'?

SJM.

[Clydeuk]

Will just add I ordered a few rollers from CPC around the turn of the millennium while I was still in the trade, I had a real nasty machine that rode the tape no matter what I did, 2 replacement rollers later and virtually a whole day's work I gave up and pulled what looked like a serviceable roller from a scrap machine, which fixed the problem!

I decided to keep the other rollers in the belief that there was some odd issue with the mech that I hadn't been able to put my finger on.

It was one of these rollers I tried in my Charlie last year, with the same results (fading audio, tracking errors and visible riding of the tape up the ACE head with tape edge crinkling).

I ordered a NOS Philips genuine roller which pretty much cured all that, apart from as mentioned the slight creeping in forward search. Am I right in thinking the non genuine rollers were useless?

After that rogue Charlie I had spent the day on I refused to accept them for repair, maybe I was being a bit harsh but it certainly did my head in.

[Nickthedentist]

Non-genuine parts in general were a mixed blessing. Some were useless, some were as good if not better than the originals and cheaper too, others were hit-and-miss. They could certainly waste a lot of time if faulty. This applied not only to VCR drive parts, but also semiconductors.

Of course, when the manufcaturer's original was NLA, you had no choice.

[Welsh Anorak]

Hi there
Oddly enough, the only non-genuine parts I would happily use were for Philips machines. The reason for this is that I had some genuine Philips pinch rollers that were decomposing before I put them in, and the genuine idlers for the ealier Echo deck (the one with the horseshoe spring) never seemed to work properly.
However you had the problem of not knowing which factory the pattern parts came from - the Konig parts were usually fairly good but usually I'd stick to genuine parts - after all, you wouldn't want to fit a Fisher 615 idler and it not to work.
Glyn